Climate
of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet burst
into the public arena just before Earth Day. A joint communique by former New
York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Sierra Club Executive Director Carl
Pope, the heavily promoted book presents a formidable counterweight to the
Trump administration’s assault on climate change action and environmental
protection regulations.
In a remarkable networking move, the billionaire
businessman and the backpacker environmental activist present a comprehensive plan
for a grassroots campaign on climate change that builds on actions already begun
in cities and states across the US and around the world. Writing in alternating
chapters, they make a case for local civic actions to set the pace on
addressing threats to the environment.
“No matter what happens in
Washington, no matter what regulations the Trump administration adopts or
rescinds, no matter what laws Congress may pass, market forces, local (and in
some cases state) governments, and consumer demand for cleaner air will,
together, allow the United States to meet and exceed the pledges that the Obama
administration made in Paris,” Bloomberg contends. “The reason is simple:
cities, businesses, and citizens will continue reducing emission, because they
have concluded … that doing so is in their own self-interest.”
Pope argues that “during the
Progressive era at the start of the 20th century, it was cities and states that
forged the new policy instruments that eventually became the New Deal, rather
than waiting for Washington. Mike Bloomberg and I believe that political
leadership in the United States, and elsewhere, will come from below, not from
national elites, which remain in thrall to the fossil lobby and other
entrenched interests.”
It’s an approach that surely appeals
to Sierra Club campaigners. “As the director of the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 campaign,”
Jodie Van Horn wrote in a review on the Sierra Club website, “I am heartened
that Bloomberg and Pope see the battle against global warming as one that can
be effectively waged at the municipal level, irrespective of the current
regressive political climate in Washington, D.C., and lack of leadership
emanating from Inside the Beltway.
“Ready for 100 is asking mayors,
pastors, principals, civic and community leaders, parents, and students in
cities large and small to commit to solutions that will help us achieve 100%
clean energy across the United States by 2050,” she continued, noting that 26
cities have already committed to the 100 percent goal, including San Diego, San
Francisco, and Salt Lake City.
It’s an approach that also appeals
beyond liberal enclaves such as New York and the West Coast. Matthew D'Ancona, a conservative political columnist in
London, likes the networking of local government leaders on environmental
issues described in this book.
“Bloomberg has been UN
special envoy for cities and climate change since 2014, and is the driving
force behind the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, a coalition
of 7,000 cities in 112 countries,” D’Ancona noted in a recent book review in
the London Evening Standard. “Because mayors are engaged in such a specific and
detailed way with the needs of their cities — and are daily accountable to
their voters — they are perfectly placed between individual citizens who often
feel powerless and national governments that move at a snail’s pace in their
quest for global collaboration.”
“Accordingly,”
the British journalist continued, “there is much here for our own city
authorities — and every newly-elected metro mayor — to learn from. It is a
model text for those who argue that decentralisation works best and that most
of the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century require localised
solutions.”
In response to a question on WNYC Radio’s
“Morning Edition” about the bitter political divide in the US on climate
change, Pope pointed out that pragmatism is often more powerful than politics at
the community level.
“It's a very partisan issue at the
national level,” Pope said. “But if you get down to the local level and you
look at which cities are choosing to embrace clean energy, it turns out the
first big American city to say it was going to be a hundred percent renewable
was San Diego, which has a Republican mayor. Another big city that has said it's
going to go 100 percent renewable is Salt Lake City, the largest city in the
reddest state in the country.”
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